Pride and Prejudice
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union PRIDE AND PREJUDICE BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS On A flight from Georgia to New York a decade ago I found myself seated next to the owner of an Atlanta department store, a...
...Reading the New York Times' bowdlerized version, I could imagine Boone's appreciative snicker and picture the bland, noncommittal mask that stole over John Dean's shiny face as he took precise mental note of Butz's racist lewdities...
...My seatmate frowned...
...Butz could, and should, have cut off their funds, thereby forcing compliance...
...But they're citizens...
...Again they will be called to another door, and again will see it closed against them...
...And it isn't, necessarily, but the absolution Nixon offered let a lot of bigots off the hook...
...Oh, I get it," he said with a smile...
...This is one of the saddest decisions of my Presidency," mourned Ford as he accepted Butz's resignation—signaling that he was sacrificing the desires of his heart to the demands of his candidacy...
...We learn early in life?from parents, teachers and television commentators—that racists are not nice...
...His stories featured the usual assortment of stereotypes—shuffling feet, rolling eyes, prodigious phalluses...
...The lesson of Earl Butz's egregious career is not merely that he committed a racist impropriety, but that while in office he gave aid and comfort to racists working for him, winked at countless violations of blacks' civil rights, and generally behaved as if the principle of equality under law were itself a joke...
...Then Gerald Ford spent a few days consulting his conscience, "putting the black citizens of the United States on hold," as Mary McGrory remarked, while he prayed for either the public to forget or else for his Secretary of Agriculture to quit...
...In politics we always get what we pay for, and sometimes we pay for what we get...
...It may be technically true, as white supremacists have long insisted, that it is impossible to legislate against prejudice...
...States of the Union PRIDE AND PREJUDICE BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS On A flight from Georgia to New York a decade ago I found myself seated next to the owner of an Atlanta department store, a garrulous fellow who did his best to entertain me with jokes about "the coloreds...
...Then a little bulb in his head must have clicked on...
...This self-indulgent logic allows us to commit countless little offensive acts, like telling antiblack jokes, without our conscience or self-image once having to pay the consequences...
...A Nixon in the White House invariably spawns a Butz in the Cabinet...
...He only had to answer a few simple questions about the flag and George Washington...
...This year, with the need for decent rural housing unabated, Butz joined with President Ford in making sure that $700 million in authorized housing loans was returned to the Federal Treasury...
...Apartheid, of course, perpetuates the self-deluding process, since it protects us from the embarras-ment of ever having to confront the victims of our prejudice...
...and so on, ad infinitum, without end...
...Some people, Ford seemed to be saying, simply couldn't take a joke...
...Ergo, we cannot be racists...
...My seatmate's brain seemed a factory for cheap japeries, each one designed to sting strangers and help make the teller feel superior to the rest of the human race...
...in their cumulative effect, by some damnable process of political osmosis, 'they beget leaders and policies that diminish us all...
...From the beginning he seemed to go out of his way to be cruel...
...just as Richard Nixon, in some strange egocentric way, probably thought he was speaking the truth when he proclaimed he was not a crook...
...The next day Pat Boone, having consulted his conscience, announced that the entire incident had been "harmless'' and that the press had blown it up "beyond all proportion...
...He studied day and night, and on his way to the naturalization office he kept repeating the right answers to himself: 'First President 50 stars first President 50 stars.' But no sooner did this Pole walk through the door...
...Right," he said...
...Earl Butz now tells us, again and again, that he is not a racist...
...It may be hard for derisive joke-tellers to get into heaven, but many of my acquaintances seem serenely unconcerned...
...These are just a few of the ways Butz managed to convert his private opinions about blacks into public policy...
...Ethnic gags abound...
...It is painful to see yourself as others do...
...As a result, those seven services blithely continue to ignore the law of the land...
...I felt like Falstaff, buried beneath his mistress' dirty laundry: 'Twas "The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril...
...I sputtered through the gauze in my mouth...
...Today the Department of Agriculture has fewer minority employes than any major agency within the Federal government, with the single exception of NASA...
...How could a man who saw so little of blacks turn out to be a racist...
...Butz's gaucherie, crude as it was, came as no surprise to the many who had suffered through the long, bitter joke of his tenure...
...He squinted hard at me, trying to figure me out...
...In fact, President Nixon made it "perfectly clear" in a televised press conference three years ago that "being against busing is not a racist position...
...The director resigned in the spring of 1974 and was not replaced until last July...
...There is a passage in the Koran where Mahomet outlines his version of just desserts for people who jest at the expense of others: "On the day of resurrection, those who have indulged in ridicule will be called to the door of Paradise, and have it shut in their faces when they reach it...
...Well, given the history of America, how could such a man turn out otherwise...
...Instead of Hubert Humphrey, a decent individual who began his political career as Mayor of Minneapolis by putting through the country's first fair-employment law, we elected Richard Nixon, who began his political career by identifying the pro-civil rights stand of his Congressional opponent, Jerry Voorhis, with "Godless Communism...
...And so on, ad infinitum, without end...
...If the scene held any special interest, it was because the crack was made by a member of the United States Cabinet in the presence of America's most successful informer...
...It was not an edifying occasion, yet it differed little from thousands of others that occur daily...
...Department of Agriculture...
...instead he appointed a Washington-based task force that spent much of its time looking the other way...
...Too often, pride goeth before a joke...
...His record on minority employment has been scandalous...
...We, on the other hand, are nice...
...Belatedly, Butz answered the Presidential prayer...
...I soon told my tormentor that I did not find his witticisms engaging, that they were merely further confirmation of Gunnar Myrdal's observation about joke-telling in America being a popular device for both transmitting and reenforcing bigotry...
...Moreover, a Gre-sham's law of government holds that bad leaders drive out good ones...
...All of which serves as a footnote to the notorious in-flight joke Earl Butz told to John Dean and Pat Boone...
...Butz is the product of a practically all-white world: He lived in white neighborhoods, attended white churches and white schools, and ended up working for essentially white institutions, Purdue University and the U.S...
...Doubtless he believes himself...
...The other day my dentist told me a shoddy story about Puerto Ricans in New York—the punchline was "Si, senor"—and then assured me that he had nothing against Puerto Ricans, so long as they stayed on their island...
...That reminds me of a story about a Polish immigrant who wanted to become an American citizen...
...There is a peculiar syllogism at work here...
...Beware of jokes," warned Emerson, "we go away hollow and ashamed...
...Ask all the good folks who live in South Boston if they are racists, and you will not get a single affirmative response...
...Feminists will note that this man's idea of The Ultimate Jibe was to turn Martin Luther King into a woman: Ad hominem, ad feminam...
...it is also true that when prejudice is welcomed into the Oval Office, the consequences are immediate and forlorn: Policies are poisoned, good programs are killed, and millions of citizens down on their luck are further humiliated...
...Civil Service Commission, Agriculture's proportion of minority employes is a mere 9.9 per cent, compared with a 15.9 per cent figure overall...
...According to the U.S...
...Early in his administration he stripped the Department's Office of Equal Opportunity of its initiative and left it, for all practical purposes, immobilized...
...Finally, it should be dear to everyone by now—even to that Atlanta department store owner I met 10 years ago—that bigoted quips do more than betray bad manners...
...More or less by accident, the country's foul-smelling laundry had been hung out on the line, within everyone's nose-shot...
...For instance, since 1972, when he became Secretary of Agriculture, the proportion of Farmers Home Administration housing loans made to minorities has dropped from 24 per cent to 14.7 per cent...
...They make fine bellhops," he said...
...You're one of those fellows who's in love with the washerwoman, Martha Luther King...
...Perhaps—but in America quite a few of us go away comfortably puffed up, stuffed with illusions of primacy among our fellows...
...In 1973 the employment performance of the Cooperative Extension Services in seven states?Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland and Texas —were found in violation of the Civil Rights Act...
...One hopes, though, that Earl Butz has inadvertently awakened in us a resolve that the ongoing struggle for equal rights be not all in jest...
Vol. 59 • November 1976 • No. 22
